The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, proposed a plan yesterday to reduce abortions, delivering a speech that he called an attempt "to find some common ground" on a divisive issue.
Speaking before more than 100 invited guests at Adelphi University in Garden City, Mr. Suozzi said he hoped to bring together opposing sides in "this ever-escalating debate" in hopes of creating "a world with fewer abortions."
He has been torn over the issue, Mr. Suozzi said.
"As a Democrat," he said, "I do not often find it easy to talk with other Democrats about our need to affirm our commitment to the respect for life and how we need to emphasize our party’s firm belief in the worth of every human being." unless they are inconvenient
He continued, "As a Catholic, I do not often find it easy to talk with other Catholics about my feeling that abortion should and will remain safe and legal and that we should instead focus our efforts on creating a better world where there are fewer unplanned pregnancies."
The speech drew a standing ovation.
Of course if if anybody was standing and happened to be ovulating and a child was later conceived they are entitled to kill that child.
I almost enjoy the rhetoric about "safe abortions." This is like describing a robbery where the person being robbed was killed, but the robber walked safely away. Again why do we need a world with fewer abortions if there is nothing wrong with abortion? Would this approach have been acceptable for slavery where we instead concentrated on working to change economic reasons for the continuation of slavery? Where we conducted 5 year long surveys to find out what lead slave owners to procuring slaves. We must keep slavery safe, legal, and rare. The rightful answer is that slavery is a moral evil and even a reduced number of total slaves is unconscionable. As great an evil that slavery was and is, abortion is even worse. Children in the womb have no underground railroad to escape a decree of death by their "owner" and of course there are similar parallels in that again a person is treated as property and again the Supreme Court was involved in declaring a person a piece of property that can be disposed of by the owner.
All this talk on reaching a "common ground" on abortion is so surreal. That piece of common ground they refer to happens to be a patch of land inside the operating room of an abortion clinic. Reducing the number of abortions is commendable, but it should never be forgotten that the goal is the end to legal abortion since it is intrinsically evil.
…And later the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, William Murphy, called it "important and, on the whole, very helpful." He said that Mr. Suozzi "deserves our gratitude for exercising this kind of political leadership." [Source]
9 comments
Ya know, I’m tired of this whole deal of referring to “unplanned pregnancies” as a problem. It’s only a problem for married folk if kids are viewed as burdens instead of blessings, and if that is the case the married folk have other problems. The problem for unmarried folk is not the pregnancy but what happened before that caused the pregnancy. As my mama always said “two wrongs don’t make a right”, so don’t make the situation worse than it already is.
Sure I’m an “ole fuddy duddy”. Deal with it.
According to NRO, Lincoln did want to “phase out” slavery via economic means. Considering that this would have held out a good shot at the eventual abolition of slavery, and could have kept the civil war from happening, I wouldn’t be so hasty to reject the notion. If the end is to absolutely abolish a morally inexcusable practice, the best means to go about this abolition might not be the direct route of legislative fiat.
http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200505090744.asp is the Lincoln article
Of course, it’s unclear whether the “legal” in “safe, legal, and rare” is to be taken literally (i.e. he would be opposed to banning abortion if the will of the people was that it be banned), or if he’s just trying to milk a popular line while privately hoping that abortion would eventually be made illegal. It would hardly be the first time a politician spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
Of course, I am playing devil’s advocate here; if he’s trying to convince Catholics that abortion should be legal, then it’s pretty clear he’s pro-killing-babies.
the man wants to have his cake and eat it to.
there is a warning in Revelation about being luke warm that he should contemplate.
I hope Bp. Murphy’s ad limina is coming up soon…
Or his 75th birthday! 😉 (Man, I’m fond of that age…)
Jerry,
No such luck. Bishop Murphy still has a full ten years left.
D’oh!
Well, I should be praying for Mahoney et al., and not just waiting for Fr. Time to cleanse things…
“According to NRO, Lincoln did want to ‘phase out’ slavery via economic means.” If this had happened, slavery would have still been debated in WWI and beyond.